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June302017

You have this… friend. Really nice bloke, buys you a beer when you’re feeling down, kills the people who’ve wronged you, etc. You don’t actually know his name though.

You watch him make his way through the crowded bar, clapping seemingly random people on the back and shaking his head at others. One woman leans forward and plants an enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. He responds by spinning her to the pub’s music and releasing her with a good-natured smile.

You wonder if she knows his name.

The pint in your hand is cold and exactly what you need right now. You can’t get the image of your husband’s body lying broken on the ground out of your head. You think you should be angry or scared or sad, at the least, about his death, but all you can drudge up is a mild sense of relief.

You drink half the pint in one go and the bartender looks a little more approving of you. You’ve proven that you’re not just a well-dressed woman in her mid-thirties who’s out of her depth in this dive bar. You’re a well-dress woman in her mid-thirties who’s out of her depth in this dive bar who can drink. That makes all the difference.

You actually don’t remember when you and he became friends. You didn’t know him in high school which is where you met your husband. Ex-husband. You didn’t meet him in college either, you would remember if anyone had died then. Surely you would have?

You are no longer sure. You don’t even know his name.

You see him on the other side of the bar, talking lowly to a rough looking group in the corner. They all seem friendly, nearly worshipful, of your friend. He’s clearly asking them for something, a favor maybe, and no one seems to be denying him. They look happy, glowing under his regard.

You know the feeling.

When he comes back, he’s smiling comfortingly. “My friends will take care of the body. I know that you can’t afford the police involvement right now, not with Senator Hudson’s reelection so close.”

Somehow my boss’ seat at the table is the last thing on my mind, you almost say. But you don’t because, as usual, he’s right. Police involvement right now would be disastrous and would make it so that you never worked on the Hill again.

“You’re always looking out for me,” you say, looking down into your almost empty pint. You are actually no longer sure that that’s true. In fact, the more you think about it, the more sure you are that it’s not true.

He pauses for a moment, head cocking. “I want to look out for you. I’m happy to do it. I think there’s something else on your mind, though. Wanna talk about it?”

There is a chill working its way up your spine. it tells you that your…friend must not know that you have doubts about his ‘looking out for you.’

June292017

white boys literally only see themselves as human bc every time they say shit like “oh whats next, a fat black bisexual amputee??” in response to the idea of diversity in media its obvious that each word they add to this description to make it more ridiculous sounding is meant to be another degree further from Real people, as if there werent more people than you could imagine that fit that description

What Would You Do? television show, showcases the contrast in responses to young white male criminals vs black criminals. Not only did people call the cops 10 times more to report the black vandals, but even sleeping black teenage boys were perceived to be more inherently threatening than the white teenagers who were actively vandalizing a car nearby. [Part One][Part Two.]

Holy……….shit…….

but racism over though right….

I love this show. You should see their faces once they find out the kids are actors.

I cried through the entire thing. I’m so thankful to the men and women who came before me and saved thousands of lives. I’ll never forgive the people who sat back and let people die, but I’ll never forget the people who worked as hard as they could to stop the deaths.

I usually steer clear of that cheesy Margret Mead quote about small groups of people changing this world, but as I watched this movie and thought about the AIDS and queer activists of the 1980s and 90s, it was that quote that stuck out clearly in my mind.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”- Margret Mead

June282017

no one ever says that Rome needed help from aliens to build their empire

#l laughed for days when i found out that #ancient egyptians used water to reduce friction and move blocks for distances #and that this was literally DEPICTED ON THEIR HIEROGLYPHICS #but ~western archaeologists~ #thought that the pouring of water depicted ~superstitious rituals~ #jfc

As an archeology major, I can vouch for this being absolutely true:

Any time we see something we don’t understand, we mark it down as ritual purposes. It’s actually a catch-all euphemism for “We have absolutely no clue what these people were doing here yet so until we work it out we’ll pretend it was something to do with their religion.”

And yeah, sometimes it is a white people thing. When white people went into Canada the natives introduced them to the delights of maple syrup. The white people asked “Well, how did you ever work out this sap was edible and delicious.”

It wasn’t until this century that scientists actually observed squirrels in that area cutting holes in sugar maples, waiting for the sap to crystallize, and eating it.

The native people were actually being literal and the white people thought they were being metaphorical. Sigh.

Ooh this is my favorite! I forget what people group it was exactly but my favorite archaeology professor told us about how in ancient times in Northern China they would splash water on the ground and then slide the building materials across the ice. So there was no need for a complicated mechanical system to move big objects. But “experts” were mystified about how they did it, even though there was some kind of writing on a water pot talking about it like it was nbd. Buuuuut these “experts” were like “oh this water pot was for rituals, maybe purification rituals or something?”Fast forward to my professor visiting the region for his research, and guess what? HE SEES LOCALS DOING THE SAME THING HUNDREDS OF YEARS LATER

Sometimes it helps to just ask locals what a Thing is. We call it Local Ecological Knowledge

This is funny and all but “ritual purposes” without asking the actual people doing it can be so fucking dangerous. One of my professors was doing social/medical anthropology research during the AIDS crisis in the us and at that time public health workers were assuming that pwid (people who inject drugs) were sharing needles intentionally “for ritual purposes” and so all of the tactics they tried to get people to stop made no fucking sense and people kept getting infected. As it turns out the “ritual purposes” were just “it’s dangerous for me to have syringes with me because of cops” and “its hard to get sterile syringes if you don’t have diabetes”. Literally it was as simple as setting up exchanges and syringe access programs and decriminalizing the mere possession of a fucking needle and the new infection rate drastically fell. But so many lives could have been saved and so many people could have stayed hiv- if someone had just thought to fucking talk to people sooner.

June272017

Sorry for the long post, but Republicans are seriously trying to say that it’s not “civil” to point out the fact that their healthcare bill will cause millions of people to lose their insurance, which will cause thousands of preventable deaths.

Talk about it. Make noise about it. Tell the truth about what it’s going to do.

Can you imagine how hateful a person must be to desecrate a memorial of a Black kid who was kidnapped and lynched in 1955? And lynched for what? The 14-year-old boy just whistled at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. Her husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother were accused of the murder but were acquitted by all-white jury. The two men confessed to the crime later and Carolyn Bryant recently admitted that Emmett Till didn’t even whistle at her.

White people usually don’t want to be reminded of the racism that has always been a part of Black people’s lives. But vandalizing a memorial that means so much to the Black community is like a slap in the face!

#StopRacism#StopHate#BlackLivesMatter

June262017

First Home in the U.S. specifically for sex-trafficked boys is set to open in late 2016. Of course neighbors pulled a stink and tried to get the house shut down before it even opened.

The founders are still trying to take donations to help cover maintenance costs. You can find more information about this ministry and donate here.

OOOOH THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR MANY REASONS

Excellent

I CANNOT believe how much resistance they’re facing.

People are worried about their property values when these young boys have literally been sold as sex slaves and raped and abused in who knows how many other ways. They just need a safe place to heal and protection while they testify against their abusers so we can put the actual criminals in prison.

And people are worried about them “taking their medicine” like we’re trying to cure them of something. These are trafficking victims. But apparently people are more worried about these boys than they are about making sure the people who abused them go to prison.

Oh man, as soon as I get a little extra money I’ll be donating to this fine cause because this is just fucking great. I hate all the shit they’re getting for it, but shit or no shit I want to support these people.

This is very important

I love that every few months this post gets another surge of notes, and now is good a time as any to give an update.

In late Fall last year, the area of North Carolina where this house is set to be opened experienced a lot of very bad flooding. This has set them back. They wanted to be open by now, but they have finished restoring the house and are now working on furnishing it so they can open soon.

The link above is broken, so here is an updated one. You can see they now have a registry for Target and Walmart open. If you want to donate by buying items they need to furnish it, you can do so this way.

still star crossed is LITERALLY the kind of shit a tumblr post would look like. some person would’ve been like hey what if after romeo and juliet died and a reblog would’ve been like AND POC DIVERSITY!!! and then bam 100k notes and idris elba is romeo and zendaya is juliet like typical struggle poc fan cast and everyone would’ve been like this is a great idea! shut up and take my money! where’s the kickstarter?! but instead ssc is an ACTUAL real show and no one’s fucking watching it bc you’re all 100% fake

Lebanese recipes: If you don’t have at least 3 family members cooking this dinner with you than you aren’t doing it right.

Indonesian recipes: have you added spices? Add some just in case. Eat with rice. It’s not a proper meal until there’s rice in it. You just had bread/burger/cake/pizza? Eat rice anyway or you’ll die of starvation

Bonus Javanese recipes: Have you added sugar? What do you mean it’s meant to be salty/sour/spicy/something else? ADD SUGAR.TO IT

Canadian recipes: Well part of the directions are in metric but you have imperial measuring cups. I hope you like math because we’re going to find out how many gallons in a litre and how many millimetres are in a cup.

Swedish recipes: Assemble all the beige items you have in your kitchen. Great. now add raw red onions, dill and salt and white pepper. if u prefer it blander, don’t do the last things. consider serving it with jam

Norwegian recipes: listen after three days skiing uphill you will eat anything so stop complaining.

Indian recipes: spend two weeks digging the required spices out of your cupboards. Chop onions until you cry. Fry onions with spices until evey pore in your body is open, let the fragrance seep into your skin, become one with the curry.

german recipes: this meal isn’t what you think it is. it has 164 different names in different regions. it’s either made of potatoes, served with potatoes, or it’s cake. there’s a 50% chance it’s actually austrian, but don’t tell anyone.

belarusian recipes: “cook over a slow fire until done”. how many degrees is a slow fire? when is “done”? what am i even cooking there’s no picture and the only ingredients are honey and cornflower

turkish recipes: “if you do this, there’s really -REALLY- good change that you’ll die because everything is too spicy or too sweet but here we go”

romanian recipes: if you don’t already know the ingredients and directions by heart then what are we doing here

Dutch recipes: now add the potato. more potatoes. MOOOOREEE POTAAATOOOOEEEESSSS. Don’t forget the salt, pepper, and nugmeg nomnomnom spices are so amazing and flavorful :D

Alternate Southern US Recipes: what do you mean you don’t have a jar of bacon fat? Everyone has a jar of bacon fat? How you can you possibly cool without bacon fat? (No recipes ever contain actual bacon.)